[969] It is necessary to point out that this proportion, which gives half the value to hand labour, leaving 100 per cent. surplus value, is put forward merely for the sake of illustration. Some Marxians, however, among whom is Jules Guesde, claim that this is actually the proportion in practice. Marx himself would probably have been more moderate in his estimate, because in one part of his thesis he accepts the statement of English manufacturers who declared that it was just the last hour that gave them their profits.
[970] The development of machinery, according to the Marxian theory, tends to reduce the cost of living, and consequently the price of labour, by producing cheaper clothes, furniture, etc., and to a lesser extent cheaper food.
By parity of reasoning ought it not to reduce the price of goods produced by the wage-earner and so lower the surplus value? We must be careful, however, not to confuse a reduction in the price of each unit with a reduction in the total value of the articles produced by machinery. A yard of cloth produced by a modern loom has not the same value as a yard produced by an old hand-loom. But the value of the total quantity produced each day must be equal to the value produced by hand, provided the same number of hours have been spent upon its production.
[971] Marx points out that there are other ways of increasing the amount of work done and of adding to the surplus value, such as the speeding up of labour. Speeding up does not increase the value of the goods, because the value depends upon the time spent upon them, and not upon the intensity of the effort put forth, but it does lower the cost of production.
[972] “Our friend Money-bags … must buy his commodities at their value, must sell them at their value, and yet at the end of the process must withdraw more value from circulation than he threw into it at starting.… These are the conditions of the problem. Hic Rhodus! hic salta!” (Kapital, p. 145.) Cf. [p. 215], where something is said about the different phases through which the idea of exploitation has passed.
Although Marx never says that the worker is actually robbed by the capitalist, but simply that the capitalist profits by circumstances which he is powerless to change, that has not prevented him treating the capitalist somewhat harshly and unjustly even, judging from his own point of view. He speaks of the capitalist as “a vampire which thrives upon the blood of others and becomes stouter and broader the more blood it gets.” He might have added that no blame could be attached to the vampire, seeing that it only obeyed the tendencies of its nature.
[973] “By turning his money into commodities that serve as the material elements of a new product, and as factors in the labour process by incorporating living labour with their dead substance, the capitalist at the same time converts value—i.e. past, materialized, and dead labour—into capital, into value big with value, a live monster that is fruitful and multiplies.” (Ibid., p. 176.)
[974] A potter working with his hands makes a vase in ten hours; each vase, then, costs ten hours’ labour. The same potter decides to make a wheel—a species of fixed capital. Setting up the wheel was a hundred hours’ task. If he still continues to produce only one vase per diem, which is a perfectly absurd proposition, for he would never have gone to the trouble of making the wheel if it did not mean some advantage to him, the value of each vase will now be 10 hours + 100 hours divided by x, which is the number of vases he would have produced had he not wasted his time making a wheel.
[975] Take two industries, A and B, each employing a capital of £1000. In A the amount of fixed capital is £100 and circulating £900. In B the fixed = £900 and the circulating £100. Admitting that surplus value is at the rate of 100 per cent., as in the example chosen just now, the total surplus value in A will be £900, equal to a profit of 90 per cent. on a capital of £1000. B, on the other hand, will only make £100 profit, which is equal to 10 per cent.
[976] This explanation only appears in the later volumes, which were published after his death.